Remembering Jonathan Bowden

The word on the web is that Jonathan Bowden, the formidable British right-wing orator, modernist painter, and surrealist novelist, is dead of a heart attack at age 49.

I hope instead that Jonathan is just the victim of a terrible online prank. (Lies have been spread about him before.) Or maybe he is playing a prank of his own. If anybody I know could fake his own death, it is Jonathan. I hope he is reading his obituaries right now . . . and roaring with laughter.

I first met Jonathan in Atlanta in October of 2009 while I was the Editor of The Occidental Quarterly. I was organizing a private gathering for TOQ writers and supporters, and I wanted Michael Walker to give the keynote address.

Unfortunately, the final decision fell to somebody who had been completely upstaged by Walker at the 2008 American Renaissance Conference. So, perhaps on the assumption that one Englishman should be as good as another, I was informed that the speaker would be Jonathan Bowden, someone I had never even heard of, much less heard speak. But I was assured that he had an excellent reputation as an orator.

I looked at Bowden’s website and had a good chuckle, imagining how his Nietzscheanism, paganism, and aggressive aesthetic modernism would play in the Bible Belt.

I liked Jonathan’s paintings enough to end up buying two of them and commissioning two more. But I thought his works of fiction were unreadable. The essays he had online, moreover, seemed half-baked. (He was later to write much better ones for Counter-Currents, but it was never his forte.) At the time, I had not seen his YouTube videos, and I foolishly inferred from his writings that he could not be much of a speaker — which, I suspected, was the real reason he had been invited.

The afternoon before the meeting, I received a panicked call from Jonathan. He was at the Atlanta airport. The individual who was supposed to pick him up was more than 40 minutes late. Jonathan’s mobile phone did not work in the US, and the tardy party was not answering his, so he had no idea what to do. I gave Jonathan my address and told him to jump in a cab.

About 40 minutes and $50 later, Jonathan arrived. I feared that he would be a difficult person in a bad mood, but he was cheerful and magnanimous. He was wearing a rumpled black suit and tie. Around his neck was a wooden pendant inscribed with an Odal rune. He asked me how I thought it would go over in Atlanta. I suggested that if anyone asked, he simply declare it to be the sign of the fish.

He wore thick spectacles, but when he wanted to read something, he would study it under a magnifying glass he drew from his pocket.

Jonathan Bowden, "Adolf and Leni"

When he spoke, he gestured dramatically with a long, thin cardboard box labeled “Samurai Sword – Made in Taiwan.” I joked that it must have been a hit at airport security. Then he opened it up, and, with a flourish, unrolled two watercolors that I had purchased from him, “Adolf and Leni” and “Savitri Diva.”

“This is going to be interesting,” I thought.

What impressed me most about Jonathan was not his diverting eccentricity, but his intelligence, vast reading, and devastating wit.

On his own, he could be quiet and pensive. His face would take on an impassive mask-like quality, enlivened only by a penetrating, sometimes unsettling gaze. But when Jonathan had the right kind of audience, he would come alive, his face positively beaming with mirth. He had an endless supply of interesting stories, often told with hilarious impressions. He was one of the funniest, most brilliant, and most intellectually stimulating people I have ever known.

When the night of Jonathan’s speech came, I asked him what he was going to talk about. He said that he had no idea. My stomach tightened. “This is going to be really interesting,” I thought.

Mike Polignano has already told the story of how when Jonathan took the stage, he swept aside the shrieky, malfunctioning microphone and filled a ballroom with his unamplified voice, speaking extemporaneously and fluently for two hours. Jonathan’s speech that night was quite simply the greatest speech I had ever heard. He upstaged all of creation that day.

Naturally, he was not invited back. (He was invited to speak at American Renaissance and the National Policy Institute, although he cancelled both times.)

When Mike Polignano and I started Counter-Currents in June of 2010, Jonathan was very supportive. He wrote 27 original articles and reviews for Counter-Currents. (He also wrote eight more pieces for Counter-Currents under a pseudonym.) He told me that he wrote most of these pieces from memory. He would go to a local public library where he could use a computer for an hour at a time, and he would write an essay as if it were a timed university examination. We discussed publishing a collection of essays on fascistic themes in popular literature to be entitled Pulp Fascism.

There were periods when Jonathan wrote for us weekly, but then he would turn his attention to literary projects. Many of these were available as free E-books on his website, which is no longer online. If anybody has copies of these E-books, we will be glad to make them available from Counter-Currents.

The last thing Jonathan wrote for us, just three days before his reported death on March 29, was a blurb for Kerry Bolton’s Artists of the Right.

The last time I saw Jonathan was in February of this year. We flew him out to San Francisco to speak at a gathering of Counter-Currents writers and friends. Jonathan was in high spirits during his visit to the Bay Area. He was bursting with ideas, plans, and funny stories. His speech, “Western Civilization Bites Back,” is available here in recorded and transcribed form. I also recorded a two hour interview with him about art and culture, which I will make available if it can be recovered from a damaged flash drive.

Jonathan Bowden, "Medusa Now Ventrix"

He brought me a third painting, “Medusa Now Ventrix,” and accepted a commission to do a fourth (to be entitled “Meat in the Walls”). (He charged me mere token amounts — “friend prices.”)

Jonathan Bowden was an enormous asset to our cause, and we at Counter-Currents did everything we could to encourage and aid him in making the most of his talents. The same donor who made possible the trip also allowed us to buy Jonathan a new laptop to make it easier for him to write, and Mike Polignano tutored him on how to use it. We also gave him a podcasting kit, hoping that he would start doing weekly shows.

But his time ran out.

Forty-nine years is not enough. But we can take some solace in the fact that Jonathan spent his time well: he lived, created, and spoke in the light of the truth as he saw it. That is a fuller, richer life than 99 years of lies, compromise, cowardice, and conventionality.

When I heard that Jonathan had died, I remarked to a friend, “If it is true, we all have to work harder.” But another friend pointed out that this presupposed that we could take Jonathan’s place, and we can’t. He is an irreplaceable talent. All we can do is rejoice in the time he spent with us, and make the most of the time we have remaining. Forty-nine isn’t that far off for a lot of us. We have a world to win. Let’s make every moment count.

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47 Comments

This is sad news. We need more of him. But what he’s left behind is eternal. Vids on Credo and Devi are essential, as well as CCP talk. Does anyone know how to save YouTube vids to harddrive before they disappear?

“We lose our best too soon..”. Intellectuals pay too much attention to the life of the mind, insufficient to the life of the body. HardRights should exercise vigorously and regularly. 2-3 hours per day is not too much, and time can be made for it. The longer the body lives, the longer the productive mind will live.

I really appreciated this man’s you tube talks. He gave me hope there was another way. It is very strange how we idolize idiots, but those who have something really to give are marginalized. May the Gods bless him with joy and a job well done.

As of yesterday I was on #3 of his 7-part speech about Evola and hadn’t been so entertained in ages. (It’s okay to be entertained by serious stuff, isn’t it?) It’s like he never takes a breath, and the listener can’t either.

Jonathan Bowden touched us in powerful and permanent way. He was enigmatic, in that he shared so much of his angst, emotion, energy, diagnosis, and prescription with us, that we naturally wanted to know him as a person and a friend.

But that’s where we were perplexed. All I know if him, I’ve read or listened on-line. (I love him, but can’t bear to look at his art.) If you listen to him, you are over-awed, as you should be. But there is something missing. You get very little sense of his interaction with the crowd itself, as though he needed or wanted very little feedback from them or relationship with them. I get the same feeling when he’s talking to Richard Spencer on podcasts. He wasn’t warm to people, other than his as the warmth of fire within him radiated out to them, but he never seemed asked for emotional energy in return. That’s my sense of the man.

But I did have a dream about him once.

I was in an airport in California, after having tried to make contact with him. While sitting there, a group nearby said “Jonathan Bowden” out loud. I looked up, and they were looking at me, so we made all made contact. We went and sat on some chairs in a corner, and held what I imagined a CCP event to be. Bowden held forth, maybe reading, and I think we listened to someone sing a hymn. (Just like CCP at a bookstore?) Then my mother walked up and tried to get me away from the insanity, and a pasty white, round faced WN grabbed her arm and spoke rudely. Incensed, I yelled, “That’s my MOTHER, you gd dmn idiot!”

So she and I went away and sat elsewhere. Then the group got up and started forming a circle and holding church candles, and now girls were involved, so I really felt that I was missing out. But I honored my mother and stayed with her and never saw Jonathan Bowden again.

But just now, I started his Savitri Devi video again, and felt such a loss that we never met in person. His voice is now a treasure for the ages.

We would welome more antecdotes about his personality traits and manners from folks who knew him. Was he warm or cold, easy or difficulty, focus or diffuse, charming or rough? Was he pretty good with the ladies, or too Nietzschiean for love and affection?

Nietzschieanism is a hard task, and maybe only episodes of it are what a man’s constitution can handle before his heart explodes.

Greg, thank you for a very moving tribute. When I e-mailed you with the news yesterday, I was half-hoping that you would write back, “What? That can’t be true, I just got off the phone with him five minutes ago!”

The thought that I might get to meet Bowden in person later this year, whose lectures had been so inspiring to me, was one of those things that I was always looking forward to in the back of my mind. Now I’ll never know him.

In keeping with what you wrote about the importance of time, I’ll mention that I had exchanged some e-mails with him last autumn about the possibility of Arktos publishing something by him. He was very interested and gave me his phone number. But I got distracted by other projects and kept delaying, thinking, as we all do, that I had all the time in the world, and would “get around to it.” But, now it’s too late. (I wouldn’t rule out a posthumous collection, however, of stuff besides that which he wrote for Counter-Currents.) The moral is, don’t delay. Life is too uncertain.

I hope to see you in Valhalla, Mr. Bowden. I’m not sure I’ll make it, but if I do, I’m sure you’ll be there.

Bowdenite: RealPlayer has the ability to download videos from YouTube. I already have a few archived and will see if I can get the rest. Although England First, in their obituary, mentioned the possibility of a DVD set of all his recorded lectures.

Our Cause wrenches in pain from the loss of so amazing a man. He was easily one of the most knowledgeable and captivating orators that our Cause has ever had, and quite possibly THE greatest one we had in the present time. On top of that, he was an excellent writer, a talented artist, and a heck of a nice fellow who was both personable and humorous. I thank my lucky stars that I had the chance to meet him and watch him speak once, but cannot help wincing at the fact that I’ll not have those opportunities again.

I have cried twice in my adult life, when I heard the news of Jonathans passing yesterday was one of them. Hes speeches made a profound impression on me and I was delighted when finally hes genius was spread to a wider audience through altright and counter-currents only to be prematurely stolen away from this mad world. Our loss, in these desperate times of deceit and treachery a Titan has left our ranks. For me he will always be the intellectual standard to which everything else is measured, the unattainable spirit in the strive for excellence, in the fight for rebirth.

Jonathan once ended one of his speeches with these lines.
“I urge all white people in this era to look in to the mirror and ask themselves, what do you know about what you are? and if you don’t know enough, put your hand on that mirror and move towards greater knowledge of what you can become… We are all going to die! And make use of that time which remains. Greatness is in the mind and in the fist. The glory of our tribe is not behind us. We can be great again. But the first thing that we have to do is to say, ‘I walk toward the ?????, and I’m on my own, and I’m not afraid, and I have no regrets.'”: Jonathan Bowden- Credo: A Nietzschean Testament (2007)

“I urge all white people in this era to look in to the mirror and ask themselves, what do you know about what you are?

And if you don’t know enough, put your hand on that mirror and move towards greater knowledge of what you can become… We are all going to die! And make use of that time which remains. Greatness is in the mind and in the fist. The glory of our kind is not behind us. We can be great again. But the first thing that we have to do is to say, ‘I walk toward the light, and I’m on my own, and I’m not afraid, and I have no regrets.’”: Jonathan Bowden- Credo: A Nietzschean Testament (2007)

I spent many an hour roaring with laughter at his film Venus Fly Trap. I don’t know if that was the response he sought from his audience and who can now tell?

Enjoy an hour of Bowden with his celebrated tongue placed firmly in cheek for once.

Venus Fly Trap:

Dr Mordred wants to replace humans with plants. A misanthrope, he lures Dr Falicia Fairweather into Venus’ trap. Represented by six incarnations, she wrestles with Mordrid. Are they different versions of one another? We follow thier battle via images of light, air, dance, horror, water, fire, tarot cards, masks and swords. Supervised by a Master of Ceremonies, each gender makes ‘love’.

I am exasperated that such a first rate intellect was so little known to White Nationalists, and can only wonder what he might have done with more time and a little more support.

By “support” I mean “money.”

He could have done our version, in microcosm, of Clark’s “Civilization.” He was THAT good, and could have done foundational work. However, to Do Better – which is unquestionably what he wants, even now – requires money.

The donation button is at the top of your screen, and cash works just fine.

I am aware there are those who will criticize me for not joining in a more detailed lecture of why his untimely passing was so, well, untimely. There is time enough for that later. They will also criticize me for mentioning why we must use this “shocking” moment as a quiet reminder of the magnitude of the Battle we are in. It extends, as Bowden knew, over lifetimes. It requires a broad base of support, both political, and metapolitical.

For now, I think the best way to honor his memory would be to help lay the foundation for a more stable organization to carry his works forward. That foundation is as much financial as it is moral, and the best organization is counter-currents.

Chartres was not built on good intentions alone.

Neither will our future, which, I can assure you, Jonathan Bowden will share, be built on the best of intentions, unless they manifest as the best means of tangible support.

You want to honor the work of Jonathan Bowden in this life, and beyond?

Did I mention the donation button on the top right of your screen?

Today is a good a time as any, and tomorrow might well be a day late, and a…

One cannot imagine a non-white version of Jonathan Bowden, he is something uniquely ours, he belongs to us. If our people should perish, the world will not know such a type again. Brilliant, quirky, hilarious, inspired, exuding the passion of a thousand suns, but also odd and perhaps sad and troubled as well. Very, very English.

Such was my impression, anyway. I never knew Jonathan personally, but he always reminded me, and strikingly so, of a very close friend of mine. They could have been brothers. My friend made it to 39. When he left, dying unexepectedly and without warning, he took something away that those of us who remain would never get back. And so it is with Bowden.

Perhaps that is the price one pays to mix such passion with brilliance. Trapped in normal life, but with a heart and soul too big for it, or simply attuned to that which others do not see. A fire in a barn, the life force ready to explode – or go away entirely. Perhaps such men aren’t meant to last, but rather to use themselves up with haste, spending themselves in a torrent, living mostly within the rich universe of their own minds. Only the gods know.

It is entirely possible that Bowden, had he the resources and support, could have played an even greater role in creating the vision that we require. Our time as a people is running short, and Bowden, his own time cut tragically short, has left us when we needed him most. We can soldier on, and we will. Let his memory and the work that he leaves behind inspire us to go forward with passion and heart, to win a new world, and in the meantime to support those wonderful, talented misfits as they arise, and while we still have them. They will not last forever. Of course, no man does, but the sort of which I speak seems particularly prone to the candle burning brightly, but briefly.

Many have said that preserving the beauty of the Aryan female is powerful incentive for preserving our people, and frankly, that’s always been quite good enough for me. Still is. But I’ll also derive some comfort from the fact that, when we secure the existence of our people, there will be more Bowdens down the road. Not often, and not many, but some. That will be good too.

The sad news of Jonathan’s passing is not just a loss to our cause but also a loss to humanity. In my opinion he was the greatest orator of his generation, and I feel privileged to have been present at a few of his talks. We are all fortunate that the London New Right chose to film and make available some of these talks, as a great deal of his charisma comes through in the video clips. But to be sat in a small room above a London pub in the fading light of an English winter afternoon, listening to Jonathan speak (the verb doesn’t do him justice!) about H.P. Lovecraft is an experience that will stay with me forever.

History is filled with both remembered at forgotten thinkers; men and women who had great ideas and wrote about them, discussed them, complained and testified and created and destroyed.

But in the end, it’s the people whose words can touch and uplift hearts and souls, not just minds, who change the world. Jonathan Bowden embodied something of the madness and grand fanaticism of an Italian futurist of yesteryear, a Vorticist or a Dadaist (something which a certain Baron he gave a talk on would have approved of, I think). He is indeed one to emulate, even as he passes out of this world and takes his thundering voice to Valhalla.

As an aside, it would be great if anyone knew where to procure MP3’s of his talks at the New Right Meetings, apart from the few posted at Voice of Reason. There is a long list of interesting topics he spoke on and they would certainly be even more illuminating with his live oration.

I had the pleasure of meeting Jonathan Bowden in February. He was a unique individual: Brilliant, witty, courteous and very English. At this sad moment, I am reminded of Euripides: “Those whom the Gods love, they make to die young.” Their gain is our deep, deep loss. R.I.P. Mr. Bowden. Your fame will not be extinguished.

I have just finished watching Jonathan Bowden’s film “Venus Fly Trap”. Amazing dialogue.

“Life’s not really about having a joke. It’s passionately serious, for one reason alone, and that is, that life is death; their intertwined with each other, dialectically, the one and the other. You know, from biology, DNA, that curves round, has a spiral, and a double helix, upon itself. That is what life is, two strands, life and its negation – death, woven together into one formulation, the one and the other. That’s why we should have no fear of death at all. Death is life and its converse. Even those who are in the midst of life are in death, and they shouldn’t be afraid.” – Dr Mordred (Jonathan Bowden) speaking to Dr Falicia Fairweather.

I just listen the intervention yesterday in this site about “cultural marxisme and Frankfort-school ” for the second time because i listen it the are long time ago but without a text, and i didn’t knew this very very sad news ; I m from France and i had and vigorous interest toward Jonathan Bowden since fews years and use to listen regularly his interventions in London and elsewhere , view some movies … i plan to meet him in London . But this morning i was checked for an article in counter current but the site was off line . So i went to google search and it’s by this way i fund a link who announce about his disappearance . I don’t speak enough nicely the language of Shakespeare for write something he deserve . Just i can said it was among the only personalities who attract my attention very strongly …i hope he will inspire others ..that’s will be difficult but hugely necessary .
I hope the totality of his peak will be on line . especially with the text too . This way we can understand more precisely the speech. He deserve it.

Does anyone know why Bowden’s website is down? It’s been down since his death. It’s a very strange way to pay respect to a man by removing his web presence and denying people the opportunity to read his articles or see his artwork. There were a huge number of speeches, drawings, paintings, audio, films and articles on his website which aren’t available anywhere else. Some of his speeches are on youtube, but many of them have now been attached to crude anti-semitic graphics by stormfront types, which is an abuse of his work imo. Not only have we lost the man, we’ve lost access to the vast bulk of his work.

A Sad Day for the West
I was trying to think of something Bowden like to put in tribute to the great man and then it dawned on me that my words could never do such a giant intelect justice. The first time I had the pleasure of listening to a JB podcast it blew my mind, I like many others was left in total awe and with a craving for much more. The mans time on this earth may be over, but his legacy is still very much alive. I urge everybody to utilise his volume of work available online and elsewhere, I doubt you will be dissapointed.
RIP Johnathan, you may just outlive us all